Rock Island Entrance

What happens to a camp when it isn’t a camp anymore? This was the question Boxwell No. 3 faced when the Old Hickory location opened. Today, the “Rock Island Boxwell” is known as either Parish Reservation or Camp Tubb, but there was a period when it was… well, it just was.

Rock Island Boxwell was officially renamed the Charles E. Parish Reservation after Parish’s passing in 1975. Parish had been Council president in the early 1950s and had an important Council player in the early stages of the move to Old Hickory Lake. A major player in the Tullahoma area, naming the abandoned camp after Parish made sense.

But from 1960 to 1975, Rock Island wasn’t Boxwell and it wasn’t the Parish Reservation. Seen here is the entrance to the Rock Island location in the 1970s. As you can get from the “sign,” the letters “BSA” adorn both circles, but there is no lettering in the center. It was a camp without a name… at least temporarily.

Rock Island entrance, mid-1970s. Photo by Michael Seay.